Tile, Tile Everywhere

It seems that laying small tiles takes longer than laying big ones. At least that was the revelation that Laura had today while on day seven of the downstairs bathroom tile installation. Our previous tile projects involved only floor tiles that were much larger and far less complicated than what we are currently working on. We made good progress over the last two days on the subway tile walls, and it appears that there is one more day of tile installation and probably a full day of grouting to wrap up that room. We will have to get the door frame set and trimmed as well as the medicine cabinet installed before that happens, so we have a few steps to make before that can be a completed room. Super-friend Jill helped out on Saturday and Sunday with the tile extravaganza and sanding some of the existing molding to prep for paint. I was attempting to get as much dusty work wrapped up before the floor finishing starts and that was on the list. My Dad also came out on Saturday and he wrapped up the last of the floor infills in the kitchen and prepped a couple of the recovered door jambs for re-installation. He also helped me out in the upstairs shower with the first of the multi-step process of building the shower pan. We were able to get the first sloped lift of the dry pack in on Saturday and that is where it sits. Doug the carpenter also came by on Saturday and he installed the handrail to the upstairs so it is out of the living room for the floor guys.

At this point we won't be back in the house until next Sunday which means we have a week of packing up the other house, making a dump run, and building a new railing on the back stairway to the bungalow. It seems that cutting up the old railing to make a ramp to get to the dumpster means that the city inspector can require us to rebuild the entire thing to code. With plans in the near future of replacing the whole shee-bang we will be building it on the cheap. Not my style as many of you know, but I am going to try. We moved a bunch of tools to the garage with the intent to tackle this during the week. Hopefully the on again off again snow goes away that we have been having as that is truly unpleasant to work in.

Here is what has happened lately:

The stairwell handrail (on the far right) and two of the newel posts are installed and ready for the floors to wrap up.

The first step of the upstairs shower pan installation is complete.

Laura and I in the downstairs bathtub discussing the finer points of the wall tile installation.

The downstairs bathroom as it currently stands. The big wad of blue tape is holding in the ceramic soap dish.